Doug Reardon's Blog (60)

Your eyes, around 40 they just quit working like they did, usually the first in a long list of body part failures. Then, in no particular order (and if it hasn’t happened yet you haven't lived long enough): You can no longer write your name in the snow when you pee (doesn't apply to women). Your…

My Science Fiction club was meeting the other night, and the subject of weird religions came up (most members are christians) and everybody started trashing mormonism and scientology as particularly unbelieveable, when I said: "When you realize why you don't believe in those, you will know why I don't believe yours! This earned a nervous laugh among the "saved" crowd. But it did recall to mind all the group therapy sessions I ran at the transitional home. Everybody realized and agreed…

My wife and I were having dinner in our favorite Mexican restaurant, there was a ballad playing in Spanish, which I neither speak nor understand. Suddenly, I had this vivid memory of being in a bar in rural Mexico and drinking and feeling morose over having lost my one true love! I remembered my life, my love and our relationship. I began crying, because of that loss, and I couldn't explain what the hell was going on. Fortunately my wife was sympathetic and didn't have me committed. Has…

I just read an article about the Federal Government wanting access to all students' "permanent records". And I remembered the time I went back to my old high school to review mine. The first thing I noticed was that every year when they asked about vocational aims, and I had duly put "cosmologist" they had corrected my obvious miss-spelling to "cosmotologist". Then I noticed that my principal had sent a note to the FBI informing them that I was a "potenital presidential assassin" a communist…

I will freely admit that I wouldn't vote for Obama again, if I had any other choice, but I fear the republican alternatives are much worse, and to vote for a third party candidate would be spitting into the wind. My question for the conservatives on TA is: would you really vote for Perry or Bachman if they are nominated, and why?

I was thinking about all the little prayers that religious families recite throughout the day, such as: "Praise the Lord!", "god is watching", "bless you" & etc. and how they offer comfort to each other. And, I realized that my family of ardent atheists, does pretty much the same. But we don't acknowledge some deity. Our prayer, nevertheless, is uttered to comfort each other in tough times, it's uttered when we're laughing, we say it when we're scared, and most times we just say it…

I was thinking, (something I have an uncontrollable propensity to do), about how all religions claim to be peaceful, but all seem to condone murder (with the exception of Janists). Not only in their religious texts, but also in their literature. In the Chronicals of Narnia, the first time the children meet Aslan, he teaches them to kill. And lets not even discuss the "Left Behind" series. It has been my general experience that when someone tells you how loving, wonderful, and peaceful…

I am confused, which is not unusual, having survived the sexual revolution of the late 60's and early 70's (when women proclaimed to be every bit as sexual as men), I now am informed that to even ask a woman if she is interested in a possible sexual liaison is harassment. I think back on all the times I broached this subject with women of my acquaintance and been rejected by most, but accepted by some and wonder, what am I missing? To me, sex is the nicest thing two humans can do for each…

My wife, like me, is an atheist (thank god!). When her dad was dying the last thing he asked her was to accept jesus and go back to church. She told him she couldn't do that (my wife is a stickler for the truth). My reaction was to say: you should have just agreed, it would have pleased him, comforted him, made him happy, and done no harm, since when he was dead he'd never know anyway. She said that if she had done that she'd feel guilty, and would feel compelled to at least try, though…

I spent the first seven years of my educational life in catholic schools, k-6. It was a well know fact that I was retarded and couldn't be expected to perform at the same level as the other children, so whatever I did, the nuns just accepted and for the most part left me alone. In the seventh grade I transferred to the public school system, and discovered the library. In the ninth grade they tested all the students as to level of proficiency. My parents were asked to come and meet with…

when I was 19, a time much farther back than I had been alive at that time, My one true love became a Jesus freak. She begged me and implored me to "Just ask Jesus to come into your life." And being the lovestruck teenager I was, I did what she asked. I prayed every day for Jesus to come into my life, I carried a bible with me constantly and read it at every opportunity, I joined a pentecostal church, I wore crucifix around my neck that had belonged to a archbishop relative. And, every day… Continue

"Faith makes all things possible." "For the magic to work, you have to believe in it." "If you Believe, it will Happen." "Those who have faith need no explanation."

The essence of Mysticism is that one can alter reality by the power of the mind. If you can believe something, without a doubt, then that is reality. There is no "absolute" reality, no one way that the universe is, there is only our belief of what the universe really is. Ergo, to become god like, one…

My sister-in-law (I love her, but she is dumb as a stump) had a cousin who was struck down in the prime of life with paraplegia. His legs were paralyzed from the "knees" down. All the specialists doctors he saw said the same thing: we can find no physical or neurological basis for your paralysis. Now the patient assumed that this meant that his illness was so mysterious and rare that the doctors were at a total loss. They did talk to him about hysterical and psychosomatic disorders,…

My mother was big on prophecy when I was growing up. Jean Dixon was one of her favorites. Jean always extolled the correct prophecies that she had made in the past (JFK's assassination for example) Of course these prophecies were always revealed after the fact. I kept track of Ms. Dixon's prophecies for the future (at that time, all of which are now well past the time predicted) Not one, not a single one of her predictions have ever come true. Not the anti-Christ arising in an Arab nation, born… Continue

Since the fear of death is the most primal fear that humans have, I have always thought that the major impetus for believing in Christianity and Islam, is that it helps to mollify this fear. If you have ever been in, or seen someone in, a full phobia induced panic attack, you know that reason and logic are worthless in alleviating that panic. May not, this explain the intractability of belief in the afterlife? Being an atheist I know that death is oblivion, and since I will not know anything… Continue

Forty two years ago, on this very night, the night of the harvest moon, a small boy raised Catholic in Rochester, NY, was taken by his grandma to a small rural Alabama, primitive Baptist Church for ... REVIVAL!

Never before having witnessed such a spectacle he was held in rapt terror as the bellicose man in front of him raged about the coming tribulations foretold in the bible. And all of those terrible things of which he spoke were to be presaged by signs and miracles; one of which was…

I have a question for those of you who choose to call yourselves agnostics. Do you really believe that it is possible that the Flying Spaghetti Monster really exists? The standard answer I get when I pose this questions is: anything is possible. But if impossibilities did not exist then half the proofs in mathematics are wrong. Now, if you grant that the FSM is (in all likelihood) impossible, why is it any different for any other god? It is difficult for me to fathom how anyone can hear the… Continue

About 10 years ago, we got a bucket-O-chicken. Nah, not KFC but a hen and 10 eggs in a five gallon bucket. We were over run with ticks, my wife and son couldn't step out of the house without getting covered up with them (for some reason they pretty much ignored me?). Researchers at Auburn University would send their graduate students out to our place to collect ticks. My wife thought that maybe chickens were the answer. She was right, our dogs no longer look like they have grape clusters… Continue